My name is Brandie and I’m 29 years old. I started dating my childhood/ high school sweetheart (Daniel) about 5 months ago. He has to great kids, a 5year-old little girl (lets call her M) and a 15 month old son (lets call him C).He is always been my best friend and tried to be friends with his wife. I've been in love with him since I was 13. We just never acted on anything until 7 months ago. I've been in my SO life off and on since high school. His little girl knows me as aunt Brandie.
When he met his wife I thought she was using him. Anyway, back in 2008 while he was at work she started hanging out with a bad crowd and started doing drugs...he picked up his family and move. I was heartbroken b/c he didn't let me know until a week before hey left. When they came back to visit family on holiday she never wanted to go to see his family and she would hang out with her sister if she didn’t go with him. She ended up getting pregnant; I always took it as they were happy together with a happy family.
A month after their son was born she ended up going to jail for burglary. Daniel was so heartbroken he didn’t know what was going on. He sad they had been unhappy for sometime but he believed that things would get better, but when he was at work or so called hanging with her sister she was off doing drugs and breaking into peoples homes. Daniel has a great paying job b/c he didn’t want her working and wanted her to take care of the house and kids. He is very old fashion unlike me where I have to work or I will go crazy and I told him I will never give up my job. Well she got out of jail and was put on probation for 5 years.
Well is seems like two months out of jail she was back to her old trick but with a credit card fraud added to the list. Well we live in a city that is bordering and another state and this dumbass does it not only in that state she just got out of jail but also in the state next to us. Almost 4 months after she got out of jail the other state picked her up and took her back to jail and the next day took Daniel’s kids from him. He called me crying he thought she was clean, and so upset that they took his kids. It took him 3 months to get his kids back and his in-laws took him and the kids in until his wife got out of jail and back on there feet. After one court date her lawyer made it clear she was going to sever time in prison in one if not both states and looking at 15years in the state she was first arrested in b/c she broke the terms of her probation. Well she got 10 years in the 2nd state and when released she will go straight to jail in the 1st state until sentences to prison.
Daniel is learning to be a full-time parent. I try to help every way I can. He still living with his in-laws, paying rent taking care of the kids trying to keep his job. They do not help him one bit and treat him really bad. I go over there about 3 times a week and I knew is in-laws before he did and I could never imagine they would treat people like they do him. The more I’m around them the more I realized where their kids went wrong. I told Daniel to get his kids out of that house now. I told him I would help as much as I could.
The worst part of this crappy deal is that I don’t think his ex-wife cares about the kids. Daniel lets me read her letters and out of her last 5 letters she wrote about the kids in two sentences. Her exact words “tell M and C I said hey and I love them.”& “Daniel why do you always talk about the kids…” The rest of her letters are about Daniel, money, payment on a phone so she can call her mom and Daniel. He gets so mad; he wishes she would act like she cares about them. He is teaching M to read and she wants to read her mommy’s letters to Daniel but he won’t let her but she doesn’t even mention their names.
I’ve told Daniel I don’t want the kids to see us together as a couple right now b/c I’m not sure how M will take it. She asks about her mommy all the time and when can she go see her. I gave her and C some fake phones to play with and she always pretend like she is talking to her mommy.

Is there ways to get M off thinking of her mom so much?